Roll up your sleeve

This flu season is too scary for excuses. Get that shot.

January 13, 2013

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel watches as Julie Morita, Medical Director for the immunization program at the Chicago Department of Public Health, gives him a flu shot Friday, Jan. 11, 2013 at the Uptown Neighborhood Clinic in Chicago. (Anthony Souffle)

The news about this year's flu season has gone from bad to worse. It hit earlier and harder, and the most prevalent virus currently in circulation is nastier than most.

Clinics and doctors' offices are overflowing. Emergency rooms are turning away noncritical patients. Nursing homes and maternity wards are asking people not to visit, because the very old and the very young are especially vulnerable to the flu.

Workplaces are filled with empty desks, and many of the people who are showing up for work probably shouldn't. Let's not even talk about how unsettling it is to breathe the air on the CTA.

In the last quarter of 2012, nearly 100 people with flulike symptoms were treated in intensive care units in Chicago hospitals, compared with one — one — in the same window a year earlier. Labs that test for influenza report a 17 percent positive rate so far. Last year at this time, it was 1 percent.

The good news is that the current influenza vaccine — as always, the product of an educated guess about which strain will be dominant — is well matched to this year's H3N2 bug. As NBC's medical editor Nancy Snyderman said on the "Today" show last week, "They nailed it this year."

So, did you get your flu shot?

We've heard all the excuses. We've used them ourselves. They don't hold water, especially this year.

You can catch the flu from the shot. No, you can't. It's a killed-virus vaccine.

It's too late now. It's never too late. It can take 10 days to two weeks for the vaccine to provide immunity, so it's best not to wait until the person in the next cubicle is hacking. But the flu season typically lasts till March. Roll up your sleeve!

I don't need it. Feeling smug because you've never had a flu shot and never had the flu? This would be a bad year for your luck to run out. Perhaps you think you're safe because you don't fall into any of the high-risk groups: infants, seniors and those with chronic health conditions. Well, think about those around you. The more people who are immunized, the smaller the threat to everyone. You might not die from the flu, but you could pass it on to grandma.

It doesn't work anyway. Not so fast. There's been a fair amount of research lately that suggests the vaccine is less effective than advertised. That shouldn't dissuade people from getting a shot.

It's hard to measure the vaccine's success for a number of reasons. The vaccine varies from year to year, and so does the severity of the season.

It's impossible to count how many deaths are prevented, of course. Even counting the dead is tricky, because most people who might be considered flu victims die from secondary causes, not the virus itself. Many of them also have underlying health problems or other contributing factors, such as limited access to health care.

To judge how well the vaccine works, researchers generally extrapolate by comparing the number of deaths during flu season in vaccinated and unvaccinated populations. That's obviously a stretch. It's impossible to account for (or even identify) all of the variables between the two samples.

Better studies would require larger samples, but flu deaths are relatively rare. And many scientists resist doing controlled studies that would require them to withhold the vaccine from one group while immunizing another.

A November report by the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy says the vaccine's effectiveness has been overstated. In particular, the vaccine works better for young, healthy adults than for seniors, who account for the overwhelming majority of flu deaths.

"We have overpromoted and overhyped this vaccine," the center's director, Dr. Michael Osterholm, told The New York Times. Osterholm isn't saying the vaccine doesn't work at all, though. His main concern is that overconfidence in its effectiveness will inhibit development of better treatments.

"I say, 'Use this vaccine,'" he told the Times. "The safety profile is actually quite good. But we have oversold it. Use it — but just know it's not going to work nearly as well as everyone says."

So please, for everyone's sake: Get a flu shot. Take care of yourself and others. Cover your mouth, wash your hands, stay away from sick people.